Undercover officer who deceived women was ‘morally bankrupt’, inquiry hears

Two women who were deceived into sexual relations by the same undercover police officer have called his behaviour “degrading and morally bankrupt”, a public inquiry has heard.

The officer, Trevor Morris, deceived the two women while he spent four years undercover infiltrating leftwing and anti-racist activists.

One of the women, known as Bea, had a relationship with him for more than a year. She said Morris had “horribly” used her to bolster his fake identity – conduct that was “intrusive and degrading and could never be justified”.

She said that discovering that Morris had been a police spy was one of the reasons why she felt she needed to leave the UK and live abroad, adding: “I no longer felt comfortable living in a country that would stoop to these tactics.”

Among the reports on the activists Morris submitted to his superiors were details of her and her friends’ activities.

On Monday, she and the second woman, known as Jenny, testified at the undercover policing inquiry , which is headed by a retired judge, Sir John Mitting.

The public inquiry is examining how at least 139 undercover officers spied on more than 1,000 political groups between 1968 and, at the earliest, 2010. The surveillance over those decades was directed overwhelmingly at leftwing and progressive groups.

One of the main issues under examination is how undercover officers regularly formed intimate relationships with women without disclosing to them their real identities. At least three of the officers had children with activists they met while undercover.

Related: Secrets and lies: untangling the UK ‘spy cops’ scandal

In her evidence , Bea said: “It is clear that this was a tactic permitted, or even encouraged, by the Metropolitan police, given there are so many women who have been deceived into relationships with undercover police officers.”

Morris, using the fake name of Anthony “Bobby” Lewis, infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Anti-Nazi League in London between 1991 and 1995. He was also known as Bobby McGee, the name he used as a disc jockey.

In March 1992, while undercover, he started a relationship with Bea, who was a member of the SWP. Bea was a single mother with two young children.

Bea said she found it difficult to comprehend how his conduct, “which is obviously inhumane and beyond abusive, has been allowed to happen”. She said it was “extremely distressing and traumatising” when she discovered in 2019 that he had been a spy. She left the UK the following year.

Bea told the inquiry that she believed Morris had made untrue claims in his reports to his superiors about the political activities of the leftwing campaigners, inflating his own role.

She said he had made, for instance, a “preposterous allegation” that members of the SWP planned to burn down the headquarters of the British National party in 1993, “which is absolutely against anything the SWP would do”.

She said Morris had lied about the SWP’s aims and tactics “in order to try to justify continuing spying on the organisation”.

At the end of his deployment in 1995, Morris had a sexual encounter with Jenny. She said that Morris’s claim that the sexual encounter had happened in his fake identity, not his real self, was “completely morally bankrupt … He needs to take responsibility for his actions.”

“Learning that [Morris] was an undercover officer has left me feeling dirty and used,” she added.

Morris is due to be questioned at the inquiry later this week.